feature delivery

Inconsistent definitions of “feature” across software engineering domains—particularly requirements engineering (RE) and software product lines (SPL)—impede communication, trigger rework, and reduce cross-team collaboration efficiency. Method: We conducted an empirical study across 27 mainstream open-source projects, integrating repository mining, branch behavior analysis, qualitative coding, and pattern induction to derive a data-driven, cross-disciplinary definition of feature. Contribution/Results: This work introduces the first empirically grounded, unified feature definition framework bridging RE and SPL. It identifies recurring collaboration patterns and critical bottlenecks in feature description, implementation, and management, and proposes a roadmap linking academic theory with industrial practice. The findings yield actionable guidelines for project planning, resource allocation, and inter-team coordination, advancing feature conceptual standardization and engineering practice optimization.

Existing research lacks systematic methods to assess how requirements engineering (RE) impacts downstream development activities, hindering RE process optimization. Method: This paper proposes the first fitness-for-purpose RE impact assessment model, integrating a systematic literature review with multi-source empirical data to identify and structure 24 downstream development activities affected by requirements and 16 quantifiable attributes. Contribution/Results: The model bridges two critical gaps in requirements quality assessment—namely, the “activity dimension” and “measurability of impact”—by enabling empirical analysis of how specific requirements artifacts and processes concretely influence development practices. It provides a theoretically grounded framework and evidence-based decision support for precise, targeted optimization of the RE phase.

This study addresses the fragmented state of research on software feature request (FR) analysis and processing through a systematic literature review (SLR) encompassing 131 studies published between 2010 and 2023. Guided by requirements engineering (RE) activities, we propose a novel, unified classification framework that systematically organizes core tasks—including FR classification, specification, verification, and quality assurance. Quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal critical challenges: high data noise, inconsistent annotation practices, and the absence of domain-specific benchmarks for large language models (LLMs) in FR processing. To address these, we curate and release a comprehensive list of publicly available FR datasets and tools. Key contributions include: (1) the first structured classification scheme covering the entire RE lifecycle for FRs; (2) an empirical assessment of LLMs’ capabilities and limitations in FR understanding; and (3) a suite of reusable, open-source resources to advance both research and industrial practice in FR engineering.

This work addresses the challenge of balancing software quality, testability, and maintainability under rapid iteration and frequent requirement changes. It proposes Algorithm-Driven Development (ADD), a novel approach that unifies requirements specification and technical design by using algorithm flowcharts as a single, coherent artifact. This integration enables end-to-end modeling of requirements, architecture, and testing. Leveraging this model, the system automatically generates high-coverage acceptance tests and incorporates continuous integration with code coverage feedback. Industrial adoption at Dassault Systèmes demonstrates that ADD achieves over 95% code coverage, substantially reduces defect density, and ensures a stable delivery cadence, outperforming conventional test-driven development and test-after approaches.

Early-stage software development—spanning requirements elicitation, testing, and deployment—is hindered by ill-defined tasks and dense manual intervention points, impeding automation. Traditional CI/CD pipelines address only post-coding phases, leaving semantic gaps between underspecified stages unbridged. Method: We propose “workflow-as-software,” a novel paradigm that models end-to-end development as programmable workflows. Leveraging large language models (LLMs) as universal semantic adapters, our approach automatically reconciles heterogeneous task semantics. It integrates domain-specific workflow orchestration, a lightweight domain-specific language (DSL), and semantic translation interfaces. Contribution/Results: Evaluated in production at Volvo, the method reduced test automation effort by 2–3 full-time engineers and compressed the end-to-end development-to-deployment cycle to two months. It marks the first demonstration of LLM-driven, fully automated software delivery across the entire lifecycle—from requirements to deployment—thereby extending automation beyond conventional CI/CD boundaries.

This study addresses the challenge of transforming stakeholder requirements into product requirements in software-driven automotive systems. Leveraging a dataset of 8,082 stakeholder requirements and 5,870 product requirements provided by Infineon, the research employs a hybrid methodology integrating structural statistics, decision modeling, traceability mining, textual analysis, and hardware-software linkage to systematically analyze the requirement refinement process. It reveals, for the first time, that requirement complexity primarily stems from ambiguous architectural scope and missing contextual information rather than linguistic redundancy. The work establishes a classification framework for mapping stakeholder to product requirements, identifies systematic differences across abstraction levels, and proposes key improvements in requirement validation, deviation management, and contextual tooling to support efficient and reusable automotive development.

本文提出了一种基于仓库的实现方法，通过自动接口更新和一致性检查减少有人和无人飞行器软件开发中跨域不一致问题。

This work addresses the challenge that large language model–based code agents struggle to construct complete, consistent, and verifiable cross-component functional chains over extended development cycles, often leading to misalignment between design and implementation. To mitigate this, the paper introduces CodeSpec, a novel approach featuring a dual-executable specification mechanism: it generates functional chains through semantic-architecture pairing and compiles them into complementary architectural and behavioral specifications, thereby ensuring design completeness and implementation consistency. Integrating evidence-based functional chain construction with a collaborative large-model development framework, CodeSpec achieves pass rates of 70.7%, 55.0%, and 49.9% on FeatureBench using DeepSeek-V4-Pro, significantly outperforming baselines such as Claude Code, and demonstrates strong generalization on NL2Repo-Bench.

研究通过访谈13位机器学习从业者，分析了从笔记本原型到生产系统转换过程中涉及的工程变更及软件质量挑战，提出了监督债务的概念。

This work proposes a systematic approach to derive task effectiveness requirements in the absence of explicit user needs. The method deconstructs task intent into context, functionality, constraints, critical dimensions, performance attributes, and architectural solutions, and introduces a task complexity factor to quantify the impact of external challenges and technology maturity. By integrating Best-Worst Scaling, it prioritizes critical dimensions based on stakeholder judgments. Through task decomposition modeling and quantitative complexity analysis, the framework supports integration with UAF/SysML artifacts and establishes a traceable mechanism for generating Tier 1 and Tier 2 requirements. The approach is validated using a close air support mission case study, effectively addressing a critical gap in requirements engineering when clear initial inputs are unavailable.